


Swimming Lessons

by Calantian



Category: The Queen's Thief - Megan Whalen Turner
Genre: Borrowing metaphors from Ancient Greek natural philosophy, M/M, Mild Lover's Quarrel, No Spoilers for Book 6: Return of the Thief (Queen's Thief), Post-Book 5: Thick as Thieves (Queen's Thief), Slice of Life, Warning for a very brief scene about the fear of drowning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-01
Updated: 2020-11-01
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:41:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27321370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Calantian/pseuds/Calantian
Summary: Costis offers to teach Kamet how to swim; Kamet says no.Or: Costis thinks Kamet deserves the entire world; Kamet says he's quite happy with what he has, thank you.
Relationships: Kamet/Costis Ormentiedes
Comments: 6
Kudos: 30
Collections: Fic In A Box





	Swimming Lessons

**Author's Note:**

  * For [venndaai](https://archiveofourown.org/users/venndaai/gifts).



There was no wind, and the round leaves of the linden tree hung still, except where a wryneck - smallish, feathers shades of brown, with a yellow patch at the throat - was hopping about, pecking experimentally at the bark. I had taken off my tunic for use as an extra back cushion, but the day was warming quickly, and even in my linen shirt-sleeves, I had to take extra care not to lean over the scroll I was copying, lest an errant bead of sweat fall and damage my hard work. 

At least I was in the shade. Costis was lying on his stomach in the full sun, one eye pressed to a spyglass. From my seat under the linden, he was almost hidden by dry summer grasses, only the top of his head visible. It would take a truly eagle-eyed sailor to spot him from the sea below, and an incautious captain to have sailed so close to the cliffs.

The Attolian king had asked us to watch the ships crossing the Ellid Sea, and though my tower study at the temple in Roa had a good view, there was usually a joy to coming up into the hills with Costis. My vision was poor, but I had a spyglass made for me specifically, so Costis did not bear the burden of watching alone. That way, I could at least see the ships approach and call him over to make more detailed observations.

We brought our work with us, too. Costis had his classifications of Magyar flora, and I - the scrolls by Enoclitus I was recopying. Most of them were too fragile to remove from the temple grounds, but of the handful that could survive bumping around in a satchel while we hiked, I was done with two and working on a third.

I read aloud as I worked, puzzling through the poor handwriting of ancient scribes and the wearing of time, and Costis griped good-naturedly about whether anyone actually cared about how the Magyaran violet differed from the Attolian variety. It was tranquil, peaceful in a way I had never known.

This past week, however, had been too damn hot, and midsummer was still weeks away. I had barely four hundred words copied over for my morning's effort, and Costis, who normally could be counted on to be light-hearted, was subdued and quiet. I thought he was as oppressed by the weather as I was.

“Do you think,” he said, after an hour of silence, startling me, “there’s any kind of wind down there today?”

“Down where?”

A hand rose out of the grass and flicked toward the sea. “I haven’t seen a proper ship in two days. Suppose they’re all becalmed?”

Neither he nor I were sailors. We had both traveled aboard ship many times, but that was not at all the same thing. The vagaries of time and tide had been handled by others. I paused in my writing, wiping the nib of the pen on a cloth. “Do they need a wind? Isn’t there a current?” From my limited understanding, ships sailing west from the Empire were pushed by ocean’s movement from the Middle Sea into the Ellid Sea to sail down the coast of the Little Peninsula unless their navigator was very clever with the winds.

The hand disappeared and he was quiet again. I went back to writing. Enoclitus was declaiming on potentiality versus actuality, and some not-long-ago reader of this scroll had left a crusty black blotch over a crucial phrase. I scratched at it with a fingernail, my mouth twisting. The scabby thing was wafer-flat and irregularly circle-shaped - perhaps a fragment of olive dropped from a sloppy eater’s lunch and wound back up in the scroll. Disgusting, whatever it was.

I was opening my mouth to complain about it when Costis stood. In deference to the heat, he’d left his armor at home, and bits of dry grass clung all over him. His open face was flushed red with the heat, and his hair was darkened and beginning to curl with sweat. He picked at the longer stalks caught on his blue doublet, holding them away from himself before dropping them, and asked, “Take a break?”

I patted the blanket beside me - Costis didn’t mind sitting directly on the ground, but I always brought a cloth to sit on. He shook his head, though, glancing over his shoulder at the narrow path we’d come up. “It’s hot. Let’s go swimming.” He looked back at me, and amended it to, “Or wading, at least.”

A stream came down from the hills, chuckling and gurgling over rocks. It had worn pits and hollows in the boulders, and these pits ranged in size from hand basin to bathtub to swimming fountain in the garden of the emperor. The path up to this lookout ran close beside the stream for a while, and Costis had told me he’d learned to swim someplace similar.

Not knowing how to swim myself, I always watched my steps walking by it. I didn’t want to fall in, even though spots deep enough to be a danger were rare.

I was going to say no. If Costis wanted, he could go down. I would stay here and take over spyglass duties. I dusted my scroll with sand to soak up any excess ink. As I stood, holding it balanced carefully, ready to blow the sand away to the side, I felt a shocking coolness down my back and under my thighs. I twisted my neck, craning to see. The back of my shirt where it had rested against the tree and the backs of my leggings were damp right through. There was even a dark patch on the blanket where I’d sat, as though I’d pissed it.

Embarrassment flooded my face, though I don’t think Costis could see from where he stood what I was looking at. When had I become so unused to warm weather? Mede, where I’d spent most of my life, had been far hotter than this. Even Attolia was warmer than Magyar. Perhaps it was only that I’d become accustomed to the coolness here, and my body was unable to adjust quickly enough to this sudden heatwave.

I finished rolling up my scroll. “Alright,” I said, and Costis smiled, sort of sideways and surprised. 

It was a ten minute walk back to the stream, and then another fifteen minutes or so until we reached a place where we could get down the bank with ease and a basin that Costis thought was large enough to be worth splashing about in. Trees - willows and poplars, mainly - lined the shore, and their leaves spun gently down, hitting the water’s surface with barely a ripple. The sun filtered through, leaving dappled patches of gold where it hit. With the light not beating directly down, it was already cooler and more pleasant than the hilltop.

The air was still warm though, without a breath to move it, and Costis stripped down in haste. He left his clothes in an untidy pile, though his sword he set down with care. He plunged boldy into the water and resurfaced with a shout, shaking water out of his hair like a dog. I turned to keep my body between my satchel, with its precious scrolls, and the errant drops that reached me on shore.

“Careful,” I said.

Not as contrite as he could have been, considering the scrolls' value, he answered, “Sorry.”

I set the satchel and my sandals behind some rocks and spread the blanket and my leggings out to dry, keeping my shirt on. At the shoreline, the water was shallow and relatively warm. I wiggled my bare toes in the mud, raising a tiny cloud of silt. The stone was only a little way underneath, nicely cold against my feet. There were clumps of dark green algae rocking gently in the shallows, and small swirling tadpoles, hard to make out against the speckled rocks.

I waded a little deeper, until the water was halfway up my calves. I heard a splash upstream and turned to look. For a moment there was nothing, then a flash of blue flitted from the water onto a branch. I pointed at it, asking Costis, “What’s that?” My eyes were too poor to allow me to see for myself. 

“Kingfisher,” he said, once he figured out what I was pointing at. “It’s going after minnows.”

The kingfisher went into the water twice more before flying away. Costis swam more quietly than his initial exuberant splashing, on his side with only one arm coming out of the water. I’d seen that stroke before in Atollia, but never in Mede. Like language, swimming had its regional varieties.

In Mede, slaves were not often taught to swim. It limited our options by discouraging escapes over water. Some knew anyway, if they’d learned before being enslaved, or if their dwelling place or occupation made it a necessity. A man or woman in the water with a chain necklace had better have a good reason why they were there, lest it be thought they were running away from their lawful master.

I said as much to Costis, conversationally. He stopped swimming and came to stand nearer me, with the water up to his thighs. His face pinched up in a specific way that meant he was thinking very uncomplimentary things about my old home and pointedly not saying them. He knew that I knew better than him the flaws of Mede society. 

“So,” he said, not quite glaring at the water, since no Mede was here for him to glower at instead. “Now that you’re not a slave, and in no danger from it, would you like to learn?”

“No.” The answer came automatically, without thought. Leaving aside the ‘not-allowed’ part, a mode of thinking I was slowly curing myself of, I had nearly drowned when Nahuseresh had dragged me through the sea escaping from Attolia. The memory of saltwater choking in my mouth, my nose, burning in my eyes, pressed against me like a fog, chilling me.

Four spots of warmth against my forearm brought me back into focus. Costis pulled his fingers away. His gaze dropped away from mine. “Alright,” he said without pressure, and turned his back to me, sliding again into the water.

I wanted to say _yes_ , suddenly, to make him happy, but I resisted that impulse as stubbornly as I resisted the ‘not-allowed’ one. I was a free man. I did not have to do anything to please anyone except myself, and I did not like water, so I would not like swimming, so my answer was _no_.

I did not even want to wade anymore. I went back to shore and sat on my now dry blanket and got another few hundred words copied before Costis said he’d like to head back.

We hiked back down to Roa in uncomfortable silence, and I ate dinner at the temple with the monks and other scholars. Costis, I think, went down to a wineshop in the city.

My mood was improved by the next morning. I’d sat next to the scholars sent by the Duke of Ferria at dinner last night and enjoyed some excellent conversation. Costis, however, was as withdrawn at breakfast as he had been the day before.

This was very unlike him. I didn’t know what was causing it, which bothered me, and then I was bothered about being bothered. I had once devoted a great deal of my energy to tending to Nahuseresh’s moods. If knowledge of a single man’s temperament had been a recognized course of study, then I would have been accounted one of the world’s greatest scholars. 

I paid attention to Costis, too, whether I intended it so or not. Some small part of me was always observing him. He was far steadier than the capricious Nahuseresh. Perhaps I’d begun to take his good nature for granted. Also, he would not hit me if he was unhappy about something, there was that. It remained though, that I was not his minder, and if he was displeased with me, he could tell me about it instead of sulking.

We walked together to the temple so I could pick up my scroll again. In the great cobbled courtyard, before I stepped inside, he caught at my sleeve, letting go again as soon as he had my attention.

“Kamet.” His boots scuffed on the stones. He didn’t say anything else, his mouth tightening.

“What?” I managed not to snap it.

“Would -” He shook his head and squared his shoulders. “Would you like it better to stay here, instead of going with me?”

“Go whe-” I started, then cut myself off. A dozen hints rearranged themselves in my mind, and his withdrawn mood made sudden sense. “The king called you back?”

He blinked at me. “What? Attolis - no. What?”

Or perhaps not.

“What hellish place are you leaving for, then, that you think I might not want to go with you?”

“Leaving? I’m not - No, I was only saying, if you’d rather stay here during the day, with your friends, you don’t have to go up to the lookouts with me.”

I put a hand to my head. I understood clearly each word he was saying to me, even each sentence, but I couldn’t piece them into a whole. When had I ever given him the impression that I - He looked so serious, standing there. The sun was just coming over the temple wall, and it lent a glimmering, rosy touch to his sandy hair and the gold-hoop, black-stone earring he always wore.

“Costis,” I said earnestly. “I’d go gladly with you into the hills, were it twice as hot.”

His face went a little pink, but he pressed on. “You’re making friends here. I see you at dinner with them, it’s alright if you’d like to spend more time together.”

Hardly believing it myself, I asked slowly, “Are you… jealous?”

I could not even begin to describe the expression that came over his face. I felt my lips twitching up and it was only long experience that helped me hold back my laughter.

“I am not!” he protested. “I am not, exactly. I’m very glad. It’s only that…” He looked away, and his eyes went sharp. I turned just in time to see two very young grooms on the stable side of the courtyard, polishing bridles and saddles with such honest, industrious vigor that it was clear they had been eagerly listening until a moment ago.

“Get your things,” Costis said, “since you don’t mind. We’ll finish this later.”

Just outside the city walls, before we’d even turned off the stone-paved road onto the trails that led to the hills and sea cliffs, he said, “Sorry if I was being thickheaded.”

I shifted the satchel on my shoulder. “I don’t know what made you feel that way in the first place, so I don’t know whether I should accept your apology.” I’d spent my life forgiving Nahuseresh for all sorts of trespasses; I was still unused to having the option of withholding it. I liked having that small power. It would take something quite horrible, though, for Costis to be undeserving of forgiveness. My question was more along the lines of, did he need to apologize at all?

He was quiet again for a while, long enough that we turned up a footpath, and then onto an animal trail. It wasn’t the withdrawn moodiness of before, but the temporary silence of someone getting their thoughts in order. 

“You made a good point, earlier,” he finally said. “My king might someday call me back. It will be your choice then, to go with me, or to stay. And,” he looked over his shoulder at me, “you look so natural among the scholars, Kamet. It matters little that they’ve spent their lives free and you have not.”

The compliment pleased me - acting out the mannerisms and easy self-assurance of a free man was an ongoing struggle and it was good to hear when I succeeded, but I waited to hear what action had tipped the scales and made him so sullen.

Costis continued, “We would not be together under any usual set of circumstances. We were rather thrown together, after all.”

I opened my mouth to say that I _chose_ to go back for him, at the dried-up mill in Zaboar. Getting him out of the well had been a _decision_ , not circumstance. He kept talking, though, and I didn’t have space to get the words in. His concern must have been growing for quite a while, for his voice poured out like wine from an uncorked bottle.

“So I began to wonder if you mightn’t be happier with that life. I’m a soldier; and at some point, I’ll go back to soldiering. You could stay here though, in Roa, if you pleased - you’re making plenty of connections at the temple, and you’d make more if I wasn’t constantly dragging you off with me. Or you could return to Ferria with the Duke’s men. You enjoy talking with them so much, and don’t think I haven’t noticed you picking up the odd Ferrian turn of phrase. You have so many choices, and I don’t want you sticking with me, or with Attolia, because we happened to be the first option presented to you.”

“I’m quite happy,” I started, looking at his broad back in front of me, “with my current arrangement.”

“But are you?” His voice sounded almost normal, but the words came out too fast. “You’re with me all the time, you haven’t had a chance to decide for yourself, on your own.”

Laughter tickled my throat again, and I swallowed it down. Freedom kept bringing me new novelties. 

But the argument was not entirely new. Costis had made the same basic case to me all through our flight from the Empire, in much more stripped-down terms. That I deserved to have dominion over my own life. He’d won the fight, too. Here I was, enjoying that exact circumstance, and he was still busy arguing that I ought to pursue even more of it.

“The scroll I’m working on,” I said instead, “speaks about acorns becoming oaks.”

“Huh?” However upset he felt about his potentially holding me back, he had enough spirit to make a joke. “That sounds more like a scroll of mine.”

“No, it’s Enoclitus. An acorn is not an oak, obviously. It is, in every practical sense, an acorn. But inside it, it holds the potential to become an oak. You see? You think that I’m living life as an acorn, and that I could do much more. But I say that I am already leafing out beautifully.”

“That’s very well stated.”

“Thank you.”

“Doesn’t really refute my argument.”

Behind his back, unseen, I rolled my eyes. “This isn’t a debate, we’re not scoring points. You’ve given me no metric I can ‘win’ by.”

He stopped short. There was a sudden squawking above us and a brace of magpies flew noisily across the valley, vanishing into the trees on the far side. “Look!” he whispered.

Frozen on the ridgeline above us, close enough for even me to see it clear, glaring down with golden eyes, was a wildcat. A rabbit hung from its mouth, legs kicking feebly. The instant after my eyes lit it on it, it vanished again.

Costis grinned over his shoulder at me. I smiled back. Awe at the sighting made me whisper - without cause, since the cat was surely gone now. “You see? If I’d stayed at the temple today, I wouldn’t have seen that.”

His grin wobbled, then grew softer. “So, so, so. Your point is made.”

My chest puffed out a little. “I’m glad you see it my way -”

The ground went out from under my feet. The rocks and soil, dried and loosened by the heatwave, gave away, dumping me down the slope. I tumbled and rolled, drawing my arms around my head, trying to shield it. Thin twigs whipped me, rocks scraped across my skin.

When the world stopped moving, I opened my eyes again, seeing the blue sky of morning through the branches of a poplar. I hurt all over, and I wondered, for a fleeting moment of forgetfulness, if I’d been beaten, and if so, what for.

There was something heavy across my legs. I pushed myself up on my elbows to see a pile of loose brown soil and chunks of grey rock heaped up over my feet, over my knees.

Costis came half-running, half-slipping down the slope, shouting my name. “Kamet! Kamet, are you alright?!”

Under the dirt, I wiggled my toes. Aside from the sensations of weight and grit shifting around in my shoes, I felt nothing untoward. No pain. “I believe so,” I said, breathless. I looked back up the hill - a trail of rubble sliding down marked my path. Miraculously, despite the valley sides being covered in horse-sized boulders, I had not hit any, nor been bisected by any of the trees. 

Panic hit me and I grabbed frantically for my satchel, flung to the earth beside me. I drew out my half-finished scroll and the original copy - neither seemed to have suffered from their bashing about. Two of my quill pens had snapped, but the ink bottle, swaddled securely in a knot of cloth, was unbroken.

I heaved a sigh of relief, and held my arms up to Costis. “Pull me out of here, if you please.”

He shook his head. “Bad idea. If you _are_ injured…” He crouched and began shoving the pile of dirt off my legs. I watched him work, remembering another rockslide. This was not nearly as dangerous an area as the silver-mine hillsides where we’d encountered the slavers, but I still could have been hurt in the fall, and hurt badly.

“A good reminder,” I said conversationally, “to watch one’s feet. It’s easy to take a tumble.”

Costis’s eyes jerked toward me, widening, then snapped back to the heaped soil. “A reminder…” His dusty hand rose and touched his earring for just a moment, then he went back to freeing my legs.

“Go ahead, try now.”

I lifted one foot clear in a haze of dust, and Costis stood and stepped sharply back, sneezing.

“Sorry.”

“It’s a- a- a- _choo_! alrigh -huh - huh-”

The dust cloud reached me, and I covered my face with my arm until it passed. Then, swiftly, I pushed myself up, stepping clear of the mess. I sat on a nearby flat rock and pulled off my shoes and hose, dumping out what looked like half the hillside from them. 

Costis knelt by me and picked up my feet to examine them, flexing the ankles gently with his big hands and tapping at my calves. My legs twitched with the urge to kick - I am just a little ticklish.

“You’re fine,” he pronounced, looking somewhat dumbstruck and glancing at my long trail down the hill again. 

“Not entirely.” I pointed at the fine scratches on my hands, and where I could feel them, stinging, on my face. “And I’ll probably be all over bruises tomorrow.”

“So. I have a good salve for that. I’ll put some on you, if you want.”

I was opening my mouth to say, yes, I wouldn’t mind, when I saw something glinting in the dirt pile that had come out of my shoes. I bent to pick it up, wiping it clean against my doublet. A silver cloak pin, I saw, worked with the image of a spreading forest oak.

I held it out to Costis, smiling smugly. It was as though fortune itself had sent me down into the valley. A clearer sign I’d won our argument could not be asked for.

Costis stared at it, then sank onto his heels, his head tilting back. “So, so, so,” he sighed. “I get it, I _was_ being thickheaded. I’m only a devotee of a devotee, I don’t need this kind of dramatic interference.”

I pinned the tree to the shoulder of my doublet. “Interference?”

He stood, held a hand out for me, and pulled me to my feet. “Let’s go back for today. You’ll be too stiff for the hike by this evening.”

I repeated my question as I scooped up my satchel. “Interference?”

He smiled ruefully. “And while we walk, let me tell you a story about my king, the palace roofs, and an amphora of wine.”

While I sat at home the next few days, bruised and pained, he told me a great many more stories, myths I’d ignored in my first visit to Attolia as the fairy tales of a barbaric people. 

And, unrelatedly, for the heat snap continued that entire summer, I let him teach me how to swim.

  
  
  



End file.
